The present invention relates to a pitching device with a gravity return and more particularly to a pitching device with a retaining chamber in which a target means is suspended recessed within the retaining chamber and with a collecting means in the lower portion of the retaining means. The collecting means directs the baseballs by gravity to an outlet which is connected to a gravity return.
Various target devices are known and disclosed in the prior art. The concept of throwing at some type of a target and being hopefully able to collect the thrown baseballs has been shown in numerous embodiments. Certain of the various patents also show a return means normally using a chute of some type for directing the baseballs back to the pitcher. However, most of the known devices do not use a return. Where the baseballs are returned, the known units frequently have a system for either throwing the ball back or lifting the ball high in the air onto a conveyor to send the baseballs back to the pitcher.
Some of these devices are usable and provide a helpful means to a person learning to throw a baseball to develop skill without assistance from other players such as a catcher to receive the baseballs. Such devices permit a pitcher to train independently of other people and know when the thrown ball is in fact thrown into the strike zone as required by the game of baseball.
The targets themselves are also of various types. A plain impact receiving mat is known, but numerous of the inventions have used flags and spinners and buttons of various types, as well as even complicated electronic devices to show where the baseball is struck. The spinners and the flaps, for example, are mounted on an axis or a supporting cord, and, unfortunately, only too often, the baseball, rather than hitting the spinners or flages, strikes the string or axis causing the ball to bounce backwardly and thus not be collected in the collecting system. It is not always possible for the pitcher always to see where he had thrown a baseball. To overcome this, some patents have used complicated electronic devices to indicate where the baseball was thrown.
By throwing the baseball into a mat, which is sufficiently soft and heavy to absorb the impact of the pitch, an indentation in the mat will occur showing the pitcher where the last ball has struck. Also, the baseball will drop, no matter where the baseball strikes the mat, down to the collecting means. Providing the baseball is sufficiently well thrown so as to enter the retaining chamber, even if it fails and strikes the mat, it will be returned to the pitcher because the baseball which missed the mat will strike the tarpaulin to the rear of the mat. Since the mat is recessed within the retaining chamber, the slight extent that the baseballs bounce backwardly from the mat will not be sufficient for the baseballs to bounce out of the retaining chamber.
Of course, an extremely wild pitch outside the perimeter of the retaining enclosure will not be returned, but by making the retaining enclosure substantially larger than the strike zone which is the same as the mat size, most all baseballs thrown, even by the least experienced pitcher, will be returned to the pitcher by means of this invention.
Many of the devices already known, although workable, are expensive to build. Those using motors and conveyors and using electronic systems for signaling obviously are expensive. Furthermore, they are heavy to move and require electrical energy at the site. Frequently, an electrical power source is not available in parks and fields where pitchers practice.
What is needed is an inexpensive device that can readily be put together and dissassembled and which is sufficiently light to be moved onto a practice area without need of an available electrical source and which provides the pitcher with knowledge of where his ball has been thrown, retains the baseball and returns the baseball to the pitcher by gravity.
The use of the invention provides a lightweight pitching device for training a baseball pitcher which can be used in any location and can be readily assembled and moved and is sufficiently inexpensive so as to be available not only to professional ball players, but by children and other amateurs wishing to practice the art of proper pitching.
These and various other problems were not satisfactorily resolved until the emergence of the instant invention.